


Annunciation

by AKimera (binz)



Category: Earth: Final Conflict
Genre: Canon Dubcon, Gen, Yeats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 21:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/AKimera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one ever asked Leda what she thought about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Annunciation

**Author's Note:**

> One of my old fandom-of-bygone days works, and one I wish I'd spent more time unpacking. 
> 
> "Annunciation" was the original title for "Leda and the Swan", and Beckett's fondness for another of Yeats' Annunciation poems, "The Second Coming", is a bit of fanon I enjoy. All things being equal, I actually think Yeats did a better job with the Leda myth than some of his contemporaries? But yeah. God rape.

Siobhan had never liked _Leda and the Swan_ , not from the very first line when it had caught her unawares between the sally gardens and the clothes of heaven, an unexpected page in her grandmother's collected edition. It was harsh, and cruel, and just disgusting, because who would even write that, and didn't it just figure that such a story would get twisted and turned all about and inside out until it was nothing but strong-stroked black words on crisp white paper? You just didn't do that and rape was never art.

She was fourteen at the time, and turned the page, and never read it again. 

Siobhan studied Yeats in post-primary, and again at uni, and she learned about gyres and falconers, and that Yeats, really, was a bit touched. Still, she admired his spirit, and sometimes his politics, and thought of her children growing up in a land that was free and peaceful and whole. 

You don't always get what you want, though, and she knows this, and sometimes she's more aware of it than others, like when she wakes up gasping, with an ache in her belly and in her heart, and her skrill hissing and glowing and turning the night into half-light and muted shadows. 

She'd almost forgotten about Yeats, really; he certainly wasn't a concern, like where Le'al needed to be on Sunday, and what was the estimated attendance, and the hole in her memory that made her tongue numb when she strayed too close to its black edges. 

She'd never liked _Leda and the Swan_ , but that doesn't explain why she's shaking, why her stomach's churning, why she thinks she might be sick. Her hands are cold and her face is hot and the old book falls to the ground before she even reaches the end of the poem. There's blood covering the last stanza that must be from her lip because she can taste the bitter-copper tang on her tongue-- did she bite?-- but then she feels liquid-heavy warmth running down the side of her face, and she brings her fingers to her ear, and it's such a _violation_ \-- 

_And Agamemnon dead._


End file.
